Saying that a LinkedIn profile is important is an understatement. Whether you are a recent graduate, an active jobseeker or a professional, having a LinkedIn profile is the best tool for personal brand. Think of your LinkedIn profile as a bigger and better digital version of your business card and resume. Build Your Personal Brand: To portray yourself as a professional in today's job market, building and maintaining a LinkedIn profile is an excellent start. The site’s benefit is that you can do more than just list your job experiences, project details, and professional skills. For instance, while you may go into detail regarding your roles and responsibilities that highlight your professional background, LinkedIn has other great features that will help recruiters to understand if you are a suitable candidate. The Featured Skills and Endorsements is a built-in reference that reaffirms with recruiters that you do, in fact, have the skills required for the job. Asking your connections to endorse your skill set is a great way to stand out with recruiters. Right from the bio to the skills and interests you add, every field in your profile counts. Also, remember to add a good quality professional photograph! Professional Networking Opportunity: LinkedIn is designed for professional networking. With millions of professionals using the site, when used right, LinkedIn will act as a catalyst to build your professional network. You can follow your favorite companies to keep abreast of job opportunities. You can also connect with your colleagues, recruiters and other [...]

“A girl should be two things: who and what she wants” – Coco Chanel In the past decade, women have shown a meteoric rise in the job and business sectors. They are now standing on the same platform as their male counterparts and are competing for the same prestigious spots and perks in organizations across the world. Through the power and reforms provided by an advancing society and equal education opportunities, women have overcome all the challenges they previously faced and are now dominating sectors such as mechanical design, aviation, manufacturing, science and research, politics, and information technology, which have typically not been women-centric in nature. Breaking the industry entry barriers: You name any major sector, and women are making their mark felt in it, right from IT, which has Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook to Science, where Epibone, one of the most popular names in stem cells research, is led by Nina Tandon. India also got its first women fighter pilots in 2016 – Avani Chathurvedi, Bhawana Kanth, and Mohana Singh, who are now role-models for thousands of young women in the country who have dreams of getting into the armed forces. The modern woman has learned that educating herself, sharpening her skills and confidently moving ahead is the best way to break these industry-specific entry barriers. Lack of inspiration, one of the major reasons holding women back earlier, has no basis now with so many women becoming successful and in turn imparting the inspiration for women to [...]

As careers become more specialized and the business world grows more complex, the demand for individuals with industry approved credentials will continue to grow. In fact, career training courses that offer certification can provide learners with a less expensive alternative to traditional degree programs as well as provide a faster pathway to job opportunities. Certifications appeal to those currently working in their field as well as those individuals just beginning their career training. A study conducted by UPCEA, Penn State and Pearson found that millennial students are more likely to favor a reward based educational system built around badging and certifications, compared to a more traditional bachelor’s degree. Obtaining industry recognized certifications is one of the best ways for individuals to demonstrate their commitment to professional and personal growth. Companies value professionals who proactively seek opportunities to develop their skills and expertise. Earning certification not only positions you as a leader in your industry - it’s an investment in yourself and your long-term career. Certification can help by: Increasing your earning potential Providing opportunity for career advancement Helping you reach short and long term career goals Connecting you with peers in your industry Ed4Online has long recognized the appeal of certifications to serve learners’ needs and is proud to offer a wide range of courses that prepare the student for certification in their field. Many of our courses in Medical and Healthcare, Business, Sustainability, Coaching and Counseling, Skilled Labor, Creative Careers and IT prepare students to sit for and pass [...]

There are several factors that determine the success or failure of a startup, but one thing that’ll definitely set you up for failure is the lack of a well laid out business plan. While the importance of an elevator pitch has been well documented, it is your detailed business plan that will actually convince an investor to pledge their money into your business venture. Unlike the entrepreneurial hunger and the risk taking attitude that come naturally to people, writing a good business plan is a skill that can be acquired through readily available and well-structured online entrepreneurship courses in India. While designing a business plan, it’s important to remember that it is not just a document to be used for acquiring funds – but an actual framework that’ll help you grow your business irrespective of the source of investment. Brevity and lucidity are two main characteristics of a good business plan, along with the following essential components: Synopsis: This should give a clear gist of what your business would be. Make a great first impression with a well-framed synopsis. Include the key elements from your entire plan and word them so as to give a comprehensible sketch about your company. You could also include a brief mention of the proposed team size and the list of founders or partners. Clear Business Description: This is where you give the actual details of your endeavor. Talk about the product or service you would be selling. Describe how the competition is in that [...]

The start of a new year presents a great opportunity to look back at the previous year, evaluate your growth, and take steps to ensure that the next year is better. You may be looking for a job change, or might be finishing your education and looking for your first job. Your ability to find your dream job depends on a number of factors, including your education background and technical skills, your past experience, your soft skills, and more which are in your control and can be worked upon. There are also various external factors, such as the overall economy, job outlook, required industry skill sets, hiring policies, etc. which are not directly in your control. We tell you everything you need to know about the Indian job market in 2017. The Indian Job Market & Top Industries – All the Positive Signals Though the global economy witnessed a slowdown in 2016, the Indian employment market remained healthy and job opportunities were plentiful, with most Indian organizations adding new employees to their rolls. The positive activity is expected to continue into 2017, as per the 2017 "India Salary and Employment Outlook" published by global recruitment leader Michael Page. According to the report, 60% of companies have stated that they will be adding new employees to their business in 2017, making the outlook very positive for job seekers with the right skills in demand. A whopping 80% companies that were surveyed suggested that hiring activity will range from steady to strong, [...]

The end of a calendar year brings along a palpable change in the air, with every person looking to become a new and improved version of themselves by making actionable plans and taking steps in that direction. The need to improve your overall sense of being involves steps that improve your health and lifestyle, as well as a plan to grow professionally. Your career is something you’re never really satisfied with, and want to continuously enhance. So irrespective of the fact whether you had a great 2016 career-wise or not, we give you some tips to make 2017 an even better year for you! Start by Looking Back: As the year comes to a close, everyone is looking to forget everything that happened in the previous year and make a fresh start, but it’s very important to review the year gone by to be able to set better and achievable goals for 2017. Take some time off, and sit down and document everything that happened with you career wise in 2016 – the good, the bad and the ugly. Document your milestones, the turning points at work and also do a comparative analysis on how much positive change was brought about to your personal position by the initiatives you took and the changes you made. Being able to chart all these details down will give you amazing insight into what worked and what didn’t, and you’ll find the answers of what you need to do next within these insights. Research [...]

A business, especially a new one, is built around the entrepreneur. Unlike a CEO, who takes care of the overall business activities, entrepreneurs need to deep dive and take control of every department and activity in the business until they grow to a certain size and become capable of having team leaders for various functions. For a new business, marketing, media and PR are key functions. It’s unlikely that a new business will begin with a huge marketing budget, therefore it must try to sell itself by exciting prospects through unconventional routes on parameters such as product benefits, features, etc. This is where the business’ founders come in. They must take control of marketing and work towards media and PR aggressively to get their business noticed and talked about. While you could also go with hiring a PR agency or a dedicated marketing team for this initiative, we tell you why an Entrepreneur is the best person to market a company: You Know the Most about The Company You’ve been with the company since it’s very inception – it’s your brainchild. You came up with the business idea, a business plan, possibly even pitched the idea to investors and got it up and running. You have effectively been marketing the company already since the beginning, therefore there will be nobody who will know more about the entire operations and strategy of the organization. The skill that you will require now is being able to network and create content that can [...]

If you think the process of cracking an interview begins with the interview itself, you couldn’t be more wrong! The demand for jobs is much higher than their availability, especially for coveted job posts such as design, marketing, analytics and technology solutions. For most jobs, the onus of landing you face to face time with the organization lies on your CV, a document that chronicles almost your entire life and tells the recruiter why they should consider you. This makes your CV probably the most important document in your entire work life, and it deserves more attention to help you land that interview for the job you’ve always been dreaming of! Here are some ways you can make your CV stand out from the clutter: Keep It Simple and Readable: This is the most important and key thing for any candidate to remember. Your CV is not a document that a recruiter will be reading at leisure – chances are that they will just be glancing through it – putting their diagonal reading skills to great use. In such a situation, it is extremely important to structure your CV, use simple fonts, and a great flow peppered with important keywords that piques the interviewer’s interest into reading further. Most people will try to highlight certain elements in the CV that they want the recruiter to notice – and while this is a good practice, you must not do this by using a different font or breaking the flow of the [...]

Whether photography is a natural or developed skill is a question that’s been a topic of contention for almost as long as the concept of photography itself. The development in imaging technology as well as the ever-decreasing cost of high-end cameras has turned everyone into an amateur photographer. Gone are the days when only the people with big and expensive DSLRs were considered photographers. Today, high-end mobile cameras are almost equivalent to entry-level DSLRs with features such as optical zoom, stabilization and background blurring built in. Entry level DSLRs are also much more affordable now, meaning that if you’re a photography enthusiast, following your interest is now much easier! Taking a good photograph is a combination of multiple elements, and while some things, like having an eye for the right moment to take a picture come naturally, others can easily be learned! Buying your first high-end camera brings along a number of new features which give you a lot more control over your composition. While it takes a while to master all of these techniques, and you can use photography courses online to learn them, we tell you about 5 areas where most new photographers go wrong, and why you need to avoid them right at the start! Setting your Camera on Auto White Balance (AWB) constantly White Balance is a technique that high-end cameras such as DSLRs use for accurate colour reproduction. Photographs with a yellowish or reddish tint to them are said to be “warm” while those with [...]

A database, explained simply, is a collection of data. It is easy to get mislead by this simple explanation, because databases can get much more complex than a simple text file with a list of names. In fact, database concepts such as relational database management systems complete with in-built tools provided by some of the world’s leading technology companies form the backbone of most modern websites as well as software. Wherever you look, you’ll find a database – whether it be something as simple as a blog, to something as complex as an ERP system that manages an entire organization. Wherever there is some data that needs to be stored and accessed, databases come into the picture. The area of web development is especially reliant on database because the entire premise of websites is built around the user machine making a request for some kind of content, and the server delivering this content over the internet. The data is stored on the server, and the entire process of the user requesting data, the server fetching it and delivering it to the user is the core function of database management. No matter the complexity of the database involved, each requires careful planning in order to run efficiently and securely. Therefore, all developers must know the basics of database design, irrespective of whether they are working with it directly or not, and online database management courses are a great place to begin to enhance your skillset! We tell you 4 things that are [...]